President for stronger intra-regional economic cooperation

The president, Abdul Hamid, giving speech on Saturday after inaugurating the Ninth South Asia Economic Summit organised by Centre for Policy Dialogue at Le Meridien Hotel in the capital.— Focusbangla photo

The president, Abdul Hamid, on Saturday laid emphasis on taking stronger steps for establishing a more dynamic South Asia as there are huge untapped potentials to reap benefits through intra-regional economic cooperation.

‘As this region is looking outward to benefit from the increasing global flows of capital and trade, there’re also unexploited potentials for benefiting from intra-regional economic cooperation within South Asia. So time has come to take better coordinated efforts for establishing a more dynamic South Asia,’ he said.

The president said this while inaugurating the Ninth South Asia Economic Summit organised by Centre for Policy Dialogue at Le Meridien Hotel in the capital.

Abdul Hamid said, ‘We want a South Asia, where there’ll be no poverty, where there’ll be opportunities for decent jobs and decent works, where distribution will be just and governance will be participatory, and where people will live in harmony with nature.

We need to generate the needed knowledge and evidence to achieve these ambitions.’ He said Bangladesh government is committed to advancing the cause of South Asian solidarity and promoting cooperation among SAARC countries.

President Hamid said the close cooperation with South Asian neighbouring countries will help Bangladesh implement SDGs.

‘As you may perhaps aware of that Bangladesh has now set her ambition to graduate from a lower middle-income to an upper middle-income country over the next few years, we strongly believe that close cooperation with our regional neighboring countries, in various areas, can contribute to achieving the goals set by our government in this regard,’ he added.

Prime minister’s international affairs adviser Gowher Rizvi, minister of special assignments of Sri Lanka Sarath Amunugama, commerce minister of Nepal Romi Gauchan Thakali, member of the national assembly of Pakistan Rana Muhammad Afzal Khan, emeritus professor of economics of Jawaharlal Nehru University of India Deepak Nayyar and executive director of CPD Mustafizur Rahman, spoke at the function held with founding chairman of CPD Rehman Sobhan in the chair.